Aesthetically MAP has the familiar
Audionet “no-nonsense” look. The front panel has a display,
power button and only three other buttons for the settings. MAP
looks solid and stylish without any extra bells and whistles.

Managing and using the MAP was not
so straight forward and easy compared to my own Sony TA-VA777ES
processor. One reason is that I am just used to push only one
button when I switch from the automatic signal detection to Analog
Direct 5.1/DVD-A mode. Because MAP has only tree tiny buttons in
the front panel for settings, you have to use the remote control
from the beginning, and you certainly need it when you want to
change the settings of the different modes.

Main power switch is located in the
back panel and there are almost all kind of needed connectors
starting from front channels XLRs and 7.1 inputs. Because you have
lot of choices to connect different kind of equipments to and from
the MAP, your investment is well protected also that way.

There is an EQ setting for the
center channel, luckily MAP does not have any exotic and useless
EQ´s or DSP-modes. To have the center channel EQ is very good
idea for the people who needs tonal adjustment for their front
L/Rs and center channel.

Curiously, there is a loudness
setting, which is very rare among this class of High End
equipment. Even thinking about to switch the Loudness on, seems
impossible. When switching the Loudness on, it really does not
sound good either, as you can imagine.

The manual strongly advises to take
care of the proper grounding and the mains polarizing of this
preamp. There is a message in the display warning about wrong
phase, asking you to flip the wall outlet mains plug.

During the test I had the MAP
standing on the sorbothane feet, my DVD-A/CD was placed on the
Cyrus Isoplat.

I also covered all of the unused
MAP´s RCA-connectors with Cardas RFI Caps (43 pieces all
together!)

DD/DTS Sound

During the DD/DTS testing, I found
the sound to be extremely detailed, with lot of small details
(small clicks, sound of lips smacking, sound of feet etc.) The
dynamics and accuracy of the soundstage was very good all the way,
and especially the bass routed from LFE to front L/R was very
dynamic and accurate. The channel separation was good and effects
moving from channel to channel were extremely smooth and natural,
without any dead spots in the soundstage during the effects moving
from channel to channel. Tracks containing explosions and many
sound layers, were also accurate, no blurring to the sound,
neither no traces of sound becoming flat or dull.

Unfortunately this processor does
not automatically detect the different DD/DTS modes, so you have
to manually choose the needed mode via the remote control from
movie to movie.

This machine has a ProLogic II
mode, but I did not review it (basically because I do not need
that kind of stuff).

Conclusion of the sound as DD/DTS
processor: It is extremely hard to find any other so good sounding
DD/DTS processor from this price/performance point from the
markets.

Sound in Stereo

(The following Redbook listening
notes are based on the setup that I was only using Pioneer 939A
player as a transport via the coaxial connection to Audionet, so
the Audionet DACs were used instead of the players own DACs).

My power amp Mark Levinson No. 332
is very unforgiving, and it tells immediately, if even a minor
change is made to the signal chain.

At first I was using Audionet own
power cable with the MAP. I found that the bass sounding a bit
soft and the level of bass was a bit too loud also.

When I did the classical portable
radio test, (the high AM frequency test) to hear the RFI from the
power cable, I heard the RF interferences with the Audionet power
cable from end to end, and the interferences were reflected also
to the right channel speaker cables nearby. When I switched to my
own power cable with the ferrite clamps on both ends, I could not
hear the RFI anymore with this simple test.

Curiously, one interesting thing
happened also after switching the power cable: the bass did not
sound so loud anymore and the sound of bass became clearer. I
really do not know what is in the end of the day causing this, but
anyhow I noted a difference in the sound when I switched the power
cables.

Before starting the testing period
of MAP, I feared that MAP would sound too crispy, cold or clinical
in my setup (ML 332 and Dunlavy SC-IVAs, you know), but the
results were quite the opposite. The sound was warm, there was an
improvement further on to the warmth, liquidity and depth
information after placing those 43 Cardas RFI Caps on.

During the evaluation of the MAP, I
did compare the overall 2-channel sound of this unit to my earlier
test with the Sphinx Project MK II (owned by friend of mine, Mr.
Robin Lybeck). The listening equipment and setup was the same as I
had during this test, the only difference was another balanced XLR
cable between my preamp and the power amp.

Sphinx Project MK II had a bit more
dynamic and accurate bass with the lowest notes, although MAP
managed very well in this field too, producing also detailed and
accurate bass without being too excessive.

Further on, the Sphinx brought the
middle frequencies a bit more to the front and the Sphinx had more
body and weight in the mid band (which I think was good). With the
Sphinx, the weight and the body of the mid frequencies sounded
especially good, during listening some piano works (e.g. Loussier
playes Satie). It could be that the different XLR cable (Siltech)
between the pre and power amp in the Sphinx test was playing a
minor role in these results also.

With the MAP there was a lot of
resolution and high frequency details present, but curiously in a
way, that the high frequency details earlier more visible
presented, were now not so visible anymore, but the tiny and small
details were now more in the front and visible than earlier.

If our Publisher is sensitive to
the sound of piano hammer, I am overly sensitive to the
real/imaginary distortion of the transients. Audionet manages to
produce fast and loud transients very well, without any
blurring/distortion, it also handles very well big orchestras many
layers without collapsing the sound. The depth of the soundstage
is pretty good, although I have heard even better presentations in
this field.

MAP has four different digital
filters. With Redbook listening I found the Audionet oversampling
filter the best sounding, Lagrange sounded a bit darker, Blackman
sounded ”rocky” and ”old fashioned” and Kaiser
sounded more two dimensional and somehow in the wrong way too
clear, but with some piano works this filter sounded good.

Then to the most interesting thing:
The Chesky´s DVD-A /DAD 96kHz recordings sounded extremely good!
The used 96Khz DADs were Babatunde Olatunji: Love Drum Talk and
Rebecca Pidgeon: Four Marys. Audionet can handle directly these 96
kHz signals via the coax link from the player.

Even the Eagles Hotel California
DVD-A downsampled from 96 kHz to 48 kHz sounded very good with
Audionet DACs. You have to run the 192 kHz PCM thru analog domain,
and in this case, 192 kHz and D/A processing was handled by my
Pioneer 939A.

Audionet 7.1 direct is done in pure
analog domain, so no digital processing or conversion is happening
here. Via 7.1 inputs the sound was ok, the Pre sounded pretty much
like nothing. So I got the impression that via the 7.1
direct, the MAP did not add here its sonic signature, which in
many cases sounded very good when I was using MAP´s DACs in the
Redbook listening. Therefore, using the 7.1 direct, I had the
feeling that this pre mainly provided the gain/volume for multi
channel use, nothing more and nothing less.

Overall impression of the sound
with Redbook material using Audionet DACs, has still not convinced
me yet in all areas, because like I earlier said, the sound was a
bit too soft/warm in my setup. With the tested Redbook material I
was not especially happy with the sound of the electric guitars,
in other words MAP did not show the aggressive ”push” or
”You know, this one goes up to eleven...” sound of the
guitars. If you have ever played Les Paul with Marshall loud, you
know what I mean by this lack of attack here. The guitars sound
was perhaps too nice and pretty for my taste.

I have tested also in my setup Mark
Levinson No.383, which also makes the aggressive sounding material
“prettier” and more “listenable” but comparing Audionet
MAP to ML 383, Audionet does not smooth this kind of material as
much as ML 383 does. On the other hand, this problem has also its
sunny side: with Audionet MAP, You can once again listen to those
old CDs with excessive amount of digital glare, without a pain.

Digital link

Audionet has just pushed to the
market their new DVD-A/V/CD-player, named VIP. Many people
interested in the high resolution solutions, are also interested
to hear about their solution to deliver 192 kHz LPCM-signal
digitally to MAP, hopefully based on IEEE 1394 Firewire.

Anyway, if you are interested in
this option, there is a SW/HW upgrade kit coming for MAP to solve
the digital 192 kHz signal delivery from VIP to MAP.

This digital link is a proprietary
solution from Audionet and you need to get a DVD-A player also
from them to make the solution work. However, this kind of tested
and measured proprietary solution is surely working and available
almost immediately.

So if You are looking/waiting for a
multi channel preamp/processor to come to the market with a
non-proprietary, seamlessly working digital link, connecting
different manufacturers products together and using high
resolution standardized digital link via IEEE 1394 Firewire, let
me warn you: You may have to wait for a long time. In addition,
you have to wait for reasonably priced good universal DVD-A/V/SACD
players that also have these features.

Conclusion

If I would use MAP only for movies
and 96 kHz signal handling, I would not hesitate a moment, so good
this processor/pre is. But like I have heard three times earlier,
the Audionet seems to sound perfect in all areas when all the
components (source and amps) are from Audionet, so that means that
I would have to make some serious upgrading to my system to get
all of the formats sounding perfectly right.

Everyone who has been looking for a
reasonably priced High End multi channel preamp, may be interested
in this product. For the last Two Years, I have not found any
other reasonably priced, upgradeable, compromised High End mc
preamp/processor from this price/performance point.

Price in Finland: €6000

Representative in Finland:
Hifi Guru OY

Below you find some of the answers
I got from Audionet to my questions about the MAP.

Dear Mr. Pohtola,

please find the answers to your
questions in the following:

Q:> …Perhaps the most
important question is about the bass management, are You going to
provide an update for the bass mgmt to MAP to resend the
DVD-A/DVD-V LFE signals to front R + L? (pricing/availability/time
schedule)

A: …This is already part of the
bass manager when it comes to DVD-V, meaning audio decoding
formats like Dolby Digital or DTS. If no subwoofer is selected,
the LFE signals are routed to all speakers chosen as 'large'
(=full range). These are at least Front L / R. Digital
transmission of DVD-A will only be available between our DVD
Player VIP and the MAP, as there is no standard interface. With
this digital transmission there will be a bass manager available.
Detailed information is not available at the moment. If you
connect a DVD-A player to the MAP using the 8 channel analog
input, there will be no bass management or any other kind of
influence on the signals (except volume control, of course). To
take into account the needs for a bass management with DVD-A out
DVD player VIP has a build in bass manager for DVD-A.

Q:> … How should I
configure the MAP, if I want to use 8 channel analog input with my
Pioneer DV-939A that way that DV-939A is taking care of the 192KHz
decoding of the 2-channel DVD-Audio signals, in the way that MAP
is just passing the analog 192 signals without
altering/downconverting it any way?

A: …As explained above, when
using the 8 channel analog input all channels Are just passing
through without alteration (except volume control).

Q:It seems to me by reading the
manual at Your site, that there is a > possibility to set the
center channel off and therefore the signal is routed to front L +
R. This is a problem with Chesky´s 6.0/4.0 DVD-A disks, like…

A: Rerouting channels is done in
the digital domain when using the internal decoder with Dolby
Digital or DTS. If you connect your player to the analog input all
channels are preserved as they get to the input jacks (see
above).So no matter what DVD-A producers do, you get the channels
as they are Put onto the disk.

Q:…therefore You may consider
to add a function that really switches the center off without
resending the information anywhere. I do not like Chesky´s…

A: This is no option as bass
management is part of Dolby Digital license Which is very strict
about how to do this. So we are simply following these Rules that
have to be obeyed to get licensed. And I assume other
manufacturers Do the same. I don't think that any other speaker
setups will become a Standard except the usual ones comprising
Front L/R & Center, Surround L/R, Surround Back (or Surround
Back L/R) and Subwoofer as this is the most common Home theater
setup. All equipment in the studios is used with this and all
multichannel formats (Dolby, DTS, AAC etc) are based on this.

Q: I am used to do the
firmware/software updates to my AV-preamp via RS-232 myself, and I
would like to know what is the procedure/mechanism to make the
firmware/software updates to MAP, it is quite uncomfortable to
send The MAP to Germany every time in case of adding new features
to the MAP.

A:Software updates are done by
changing EPROMs. The next upgrade is a Combined soft- and hardware
upgrade. The decoder PCB has to be exchanged to a new version
(with a more powerful DSP) to have all the new features. For
Skilled people or technicians it is not difficult to do it by
themselves. No soldering will be required.

Q: How to get HDCD support for
the MAP (pricing/availability)

A: This is part of the next
upgrade. I expect it to be on the market end 2nd quarter /
beginning 3rd quarter of this year. The price has to be determined
yet. (A-M comment: will be available by the end 2002")